You Couldn't Leave Your Curtains Open

From Planet 182

Andy Fairweather Low interviewed by Malcom Lewis

Andy Fairweather Low first sang and played guitar professionally in the clubs and venues of Cardiff and south Wales in the mid-’60s. His Taffbeats included Charlotte Church’s grandfather (Gary) on sax. He became a teen idol as the lead singer of Amen Corner, the first Welsh band to reach Number 1 in the UK singles chart with “Half as Nice”.
For over 20 years Andy Fairweather Low has worked as a session and touring musician. He has played with the top names in rock, blues and jazz: Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Dave Gilmour, Van Morrison, Jimmy Page, Roger Waters, Chris Barber, Buddy Guy, Georgie Fame, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King and Billy Preston.
Last year he released the first album under his own name for 26 years, Sweet Soulful Music, nominated by The Blues Foundation in the US as an Album of the Year.


How does a boy from Ystrad Mynach come across Otis Redding and Booker T and want to become a musician?

Well, first I think you had to live in Cardiff — where my mam and dad moved to. In Ystrad I don’t think it would have happened. Then the big thing for me was an accident — somebody persuaded me to go and see the Rolling Stones, at Sofia Gardens in 1964. That was the moment I went, “Wow!” They started off with Chuck Berry’s “Talkin’ About You” and I can see it in my mind’s eye now. They were wearing these leather waistcoats. You’d hear stuff on the radio so I kind of knew what was going on, but to see it! They were on a big bill, with The Leroys and Bern Elliott and The Fenmen. But something got to me that night.

Before then, what music had you listened to?

None. I was only interested in football. I even got to play at Ninian Park, with the school, Llanrhymney Secondary Modern, in a local cup final. I was the goal-keeper, and we lost. But football was everything. It was a great school, with great teachers who’d coach you out of school hours. We even played cricket for a bit until the grammar school boys humiliated us too much. Then you realise it’s not for the likes of us boys!

Until the Stones, you had little interest in music?

My earliest recollections of music are of my father playing Lonnie Donegan. He could play himself, though I never discovered that until a few years before he died. I heard him play a mouth organ, brilliantly, but he was a very closed man, and had very little to say to anyone. He played the miserable old bugger really well. He was Scottish, met my mother, who’s from Merthyr, and was working at the Royal Ordnance Factory in Llanishen, and came down here. He used to play records by Kenneth McKellar, Moira Anderson, Jimmy Shand. A while ago I bought a CD of Jimmy Shand music but I’ve just not been able to bring myself to play it. It’s too much for me. But most of the time Scottish music would be playing in the house. And then Lonnie Donegan crept in. In 2005-6, I toured with the Chris Barber Big Band, playing banjo, as had Lonnie with Chris Barber before he became famous as the King of Skiffle. I played with Lonnie and Van Morrison a few years ago, and he was as good, he’d not lost anything. But thinking back, skiffle moved me, excited me — “Battle of New Orleans”, “Alabama Bound”, “Putting on the Style”, on big old ’78s. It changed popular music.

What about church or chapel? In some of the lyrics on your last album, I feel there’s an influence of Welsh hymns. It’s also there in a kind of gravity.

I actually tried to record “Myfanwy” once, in 1971, with a brass band, but in an English translation — and, no surprise, didn’t pull it off. There are certain songs that just have an emotional content that I can’t define. That’s one. You can be listening, and the chord sequence changes, and the body physically goes cold. If you’re trying to write a song, it’s to figure out why that is. You can use the same chords, but something doesn’t happen. The constant thing for me is to try to write the most simple song without it being trite.

What about music in school? And what did you think you’d end up doing? Did you have any ambitions?

At school, I remember a teacher saying to me “Low, you’re like a boy with a wooden leg going in for the 100-yard dash. You don’t stand a chance, boy!” School was practical things — metalwork, woodwork, riding a motorbike to be a telegram boy. The highest I was told I could attain was a job as a Post Office Engineer. By the time I was sitting GCEs, I was playing three nights a week in a band, and I’d hand in the answer paper and there’d be nothing on it. I’d come home, say it had gone well. I didn’t know how long it was going to be before I got the belt round the ear for not doing anything. Until the day of reckoning came and then I got the belt. I don’t blame my father for that, that was the way he’d been brought up. You have to be made aware not to do it, he did it instinctively. We didn’t have Oprah Winfrey then! Had my father been watching her, he wouldn’t have hit me with a belt, he’d have punched me.
But the teachers were pretty good, committed, and it was more than just lessons. I first performed on stage, in school, in The Magic Flute. I was Papageno. I remember Mr Shilman, the music teacher who was a very open guy, who’d bring in Beatles records, and he announced “We’re going to do The Magic Flute!”

Was that your first public performance as a singer?

Yeah, but keep in mind, I did it in a feathery suit and yellowy tights and a funny hat, and to this day now, I can’t think how the hell I got through it.

Your mam and dad came?

No, my mam came, my dad only ever came to two gigs. One in the village hall for Ken the vicar! Then he came to the Albert Hall once, in ’82, when I played with Eric Clapton. That was it. He only ever saw me twice.